


Resonating

by jouissant



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Character Study, Conversations, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:46:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reynir wanders into Lalli's dream again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resonating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [graydarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/graydarling/gifts).



Reynir opens his eyes to the lake again. 

“Oh,” he says aloud, and sits up hastily, rocking the boat to and fro as he does. He casts about for any nightmarish hangers-on. Finding none, he stands and steps hesitantly into the black water. He thinks no matter how many times he dreams this dream he’ll never not expect the lake to swallow him whole, to sink below at the mercy of whatever lurks down there. He likes his dreams, the ones he remembers. Few and far between as they’ve been, he wakes from them feeling somehow anointed, a small bright kernel at his center pulsing with potential, with the thought that maybe, just maybe, leaving home has somehow been something besides a colossal mistake. For surely, he thinks, it’s no coincidence that it’s here, on the ragged edge of the known world, that he’s begun to dream at last.

It’s only that he wishes—he wishes he had someone to sort things through with. Reynir feels as if he’s clutching the torn corner of a map, or of a great portrait of somebody he knows to be important. He guesses it’s fitting; after all, everyone on their little team forages for scraps. Of food, of information, of the tinny voices that come over the radio and make Tuuri clamber for the receiver. And maybe Reynir’s not always certain how he fits, but he can’t help but think that this, at least, is something. 

It would help if he knew what precisely _something_ was. 

The lakewater should be cold around his ankles, but instead it tickles like steam, like feathers. He finds the shore and walks north through the green valley, dotted with boulders and with cottony dream-sheep. Being figments, they never stray; they just crop placidly at the ground cover and let the little herding dog nip at their heels. He’s nowhere to be found tonight, and Reynir doesn’t know what to make of that. 

He tells me to remember things, he thinks. Maybe I’m not supposed to remember this. But he wants to. He’s spoiled now; now he always wants to remember. 

When the landscape changes, he begins to worry. When he sees the marsh, the wooden planks laid down to make a path, he begins to fidget, worrying the end of his braid between thumb and forefinger. It’s not that Reynir’s _scared_ of Lalli, it’s just that when Reynir looks at him he feels young and wooden and stupid, which is ridiculous because he’s pretty sure Lalli’s actually younger than he is, and—

“I told you to get out,” Lalli says. He’s not even looking at Reynir; he’s sitting on the path, curled in on himself, chin resting on his folded arms. And Reynir shouldn’t be able to understand him, but dreams seem to have their own opinions on that. He gets the impression Lalli wishes that wasn’t the case. 

“No you didn’t.” 

“Last time.” 

“Oh,” Reynir says, coming alongside Lalli and collapsing heavily onto the wood beside him. Lalli looks like he wants to move, but he doesn’t. 

“It’s not safe,” Lalli says. “Moving between dreams like you’re doing. Onni won’t even let me do it, and I’m—" 

“Better than me?” 

“More…experienced.” He looks at Reynir then, eyes like a cat’s. He closes them slowly, opens them again. That’s feline too, less a blink than a conscious choice to stop looking, like Reynir just sat down and Lalli already needs a break from his face. 

“I’m…I’m like—if there’s a word for the least possible amount of experience,” Reynir says, “Then I’m that.”

“You’re not like the other mages I’ve met,” Lalli says. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met.” 

He says this like it isn’t a good thing, and Reynir feels his face heat up. When he dreams he thinks he’s beginning not to be so useless, but when he talks to Lalli all that fledgling confidence dissipates and he feels nothing but green. Here in Lalli's dream Reynir's pretty sure he knows even less now than he did back home, when he used to sit at the breakfast table listening to his brothers and sisters and kick at the leg of his chair until his mother told him to stop. 

“Oh, well,” says Reynir. “I mean, I don’t—I don’t even know if that’s what I am. A mage. I mean, I might not be.” 

“If Onni says you’re a mage, you’re a mage.” 

Reynir can’t suppress a grin at that, despite Lalli’s less than complimentary tone. He ducks his head and stares hard at his crossed arms, the rusty spatter of his freckles. The red reminds him of the day he thought he’d been exposed. He remembers how he felt then, not scared exactly but resigned, like he shouldn’t be surprised. _That’s what happens, Reynir, when you go looking._ The memory fades his smile a little, and that’s better around Lalli, probably. Reynir can’t remember if Lalli ever smiles. Maybe that’s a mage thing. 

“If I _were_ a mage,” he says. “What would—" 

“How should I know?” Lalli says, hopping up lightly onto the balls of his feet. “I just said, I’ve never met anyone like you before. And anyway, you’re not my kind. You learn magic out of a book, don’t you? At your fancy academy."

Reynir springs up too, braid flying. He isn’t quick to anger; the youngest son comes equipped with a dauntlessness, an ability to roll over and take. But Lalli’s all sharp edges, and with Reynir he’s never bothered to keep from cutting. And Reynir’s irritated now, though he doesn’t especially want to be. Maybe if he knew the first thing about the academy, about any sort of magic at all; maybe if Lalli didn’t seem to like playing the silent type so much. 

“How should _I_ know? I never went to the academy,” Reynir says. “I never even dreamed before I came here. I never knew anything about anything until I came here and started dreaming things, started—started _seeing_ things.” 

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have come,” Lalli says flatly. He turns away and jogs off toward a stand of trees, off to do who knows what. Commune with the elements, maybe, or with the host of spirits Reynir knows he can see and probably understand without any trouble at all. 

“I just want to help!” Reynir calls after him. “I don’t—I know you’ve got your secrets,” he says. “I know night scout’s your job, and you’re, like, the most important person out here, and I’m—I shouldn’t even be here in the first place. But I am, and—and maybe if I figure out _what_ I am, what’s happening to me—maybe I can help. And isn’t that the point?” 

Down the path, Lalli stops. He stands there for a long moment, and arms at his sides, hands curled into fists. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t come back towards Reynir, but when he speaks again Reynir can hear it as if Lalli’s standing right up next to his ear. “It’s not easy,” Lalli says. 

Hope springs up, indomitably. Reynir’s always been good at hope. “I know it’s not,” he says. “I just want—" 

“Sometimes it’s not about what you want,” says Lalli. “It—it just happens. Like music all through you, like you’re singing in tune with someone you can’t see.” 

“I can see them,” Reynir says. “They don’t always look like they want to sing along.” 

"Sometimes," Lalli says, "It's more like screaming." Something happens to his body then; Lalli pales and smears like a chalk drawing wiped over, and Reynir remembers the last time he was here with Lalli and his cousin. 

"You're waking up," Reynir says. Lalli nods and shivers. 

Reynir frowns. Of course, he thinks, of course this happens just as he's gotten Lalli to start talking. "But--"

"Find me," Lalli says. 

"Awake? But--but I can't understand you awake." 

Lalli shrugs. Reynir's probably seeing things, the way he wants to read a certain wryness into the curve of Lalli's shoulder, like something about the glacial set of his body has thawed. It's probably just his imagination. But then, that's what he thought about magic too.


End file.
